Three Strangers (1946)

Director:

Jean Negulesco

Writers:

John Huston (original screenplay)
Howard Koch (original screenplay)

Release Date:

28 January 1946 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Crime

Tagline:

BREATHTAKING SUSPENSE - THRILLS! (original ad - all caps)

Plot:

Three strangers, each with a serious problem in their lives, share a sweepstakes ticket which they wished upon together before a Chinese idol.

Plot Keywords:

Photograph | Music Score Features Saxophone | Orchestral Music Score | Buddhist | Beautiful Woman

Cast

Sydney Greenstreet	...	Jerome K. Arbutny
Geraldine Fitzgerald	...	Crystal Shackleford
Peter Lorre	...	Johnny West
Joan Lorring	...	Icey Crane
Robert Shayne	...	Bertram Fallon
Marjorie Riordan	...	Janet Elliott
Arthur Shields	...	Prosecutor
Rosalind Ivan	...	Lady Rhea Beladon
John Alvin	...	Junior Clerk
Peter Whitney	...	Timothy Delaney aka Gabby
Alan Napier	...	David Shackleford
Clifford Brooke	...	Senior Clerk
Doris Lloyd	...	Mrs. Proctor

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Finland:S | Spain:18 | USA:Approved (PCA #10762, Adult Audience) | Sweden:15

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

John Huston was inspired to write the story after he bought an odd statue in London.

Quotes:

Johnny West: We are but strangers on this moving globe; it's not for us to tarry long.

Soundtrack:

Waltz in A Flat Major, Op. 39

Another dusky Huston jewel....

It was over 20 years ago that I first encountered this small cinematic treasure, on the now-defunct indie KHJ-TV, channel 9 in Los Angeles, but it was not at all by accident. Having been enthralled by the magic that is "Casablanca" some years before, I had been seeking out other films like it made by Warner Bros. in the late 30s, 40s and early 50s. Specifically I was after more work by that classic's storied supporting cast: Paul Henried, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, S.Z. Sakall and Joy Page, among others.

"Three Strangers" gathers two of those and weaves them into a unexpectedly amoral tale of the cost of reversing fortune. Lorre plays a fallen gentleman who fallen into a bottle and thus into some dicey company, while Greenstreet plays a solicitor who's been a tad too speculative with his trust accounts. The underregarded Geraldine Fitzgerald joins them as the mysterious woman who randomly gathers the other two off a London street to see if they'll take a chance on an ancient Chinese proverb coming true.

"Three Strangers" if anything goes "Casablanca" and that other Huston/Lorre/Greenstreet classic, "The Maltese Falcon," one better in the world-weariness department, with moral ambiguities and ambivalent characters straight out of films noir made five years later. Unlike those other two films, though, there's little likability to be found in the lead characters' roguishness --- save perhaps for Lorre, who gets redeemed by a "good" woman's love at the end.

Yet that very fact makes "Three Strangers" play out like a much more modern film (like one from the early 1970s, say), rendering it an intriguing admixture of old-style character-driven plotting and contemporary moral waywardness and antiheroism.